Dad in 100mph police chase with his three children in car is jailed for 22 months

A father led police on a 100mph chase along the M5 with his three young children in the car, as shown in disturbing footage that has been released of the pursuit.

Travelling northbound near Worcester, 33-year-old Jason Thomas was filmed by a police dashboard camera driving a silver Vauxhall Vectra at high speed.

The nerve-wracking car chase, which lasted roughly 10 minutes, began when police suspected him of carrying drugs and flashed their lights at him indicating him to stop.

Instead he put his foot on the accelerator and was filmed weaving in and out of motorway traffic in an attempt to flee officers.

Footage shows him undertaking vans on the hard shoulder before jumping a red light and smashing into a black Toyota.

Jumping out of the Vectra and waddling off in the direction of the central reservation, a policeman manages to catch and arrest him.

Jason Thomas has been jailed for 22 months for dangerous driving (Picture: SWNS)

Thomas, of Blowers Green Road in Dudley, put hundreds of motorists’ lives at risk in addition to his three children who he had just picked up from school on the afternoon of the incident on September 30.

The dramatic footage was released by police today as a judge sentenced him to 22 months in prison following an admission of dangerous driving.

Judge Michael Cullum said: ‘The high speed while undertaking on the hard shoulder is shocking. All the while, you were putting at risk of serious injury or worse, hundreds of people.

‘In some ways, the most shocking thing about the whole episode was when, having crashed, the rear door of your vehicle opened and out stretched the arm of your young child.

‘What sort of person drives like that with their own three children and their partner in that vehicle? You didn’t wait to see how the people in the other vehicle were. You even ran away from your own family.’